If you care about cyber security and you’re willing to work hard, we need you. Yes, YOU. The cybersecurity challenge is huge and there is a great need for people with diverse backgrounds to help solve it. Your path can originate in different places.

Everyone who works at Cisco knows that we encourage, promote and value a diverse workforce. Supporting women is an important part of that effort. The difference in tangible support from ten years ago to today is profound across the company.

Cisco’s Women in Cyber initiative is incredibly important. It’s all about the most important aspect of problem solving: bringing diversity of thinking to a team and to a problem—unique perspectives that we would otherwise not have because of the biases we bring from our own backgrounds.

The Women in Cybersecurity Community is a torch of Cisco’s efforts to drive gender diversity and carve paths for women to take on cybersecurity careers and excel in their journeys, ultimately shaping a stronger cybersecurity team and industry.

My path to cybersecurity looks more like a winding road than a straight line, but it’s the influential role models and valuable information I consumed with every turn that paved my path towards a career in cybersecurity – specifically privacy.